Sort practice exercises by difficulty then slug.

[IsaacG]

jq '.exercises.practice = (.exercises.practice|sort_by(.difficulty, .slug))' config.json > t && mv t config.json

[glennj]

two-fer is usually a good 2nd exercise.

Let's make isogram difficulty 2.

[IsaacG]

reverse was also 1, bumping to 2.

[rabestro]

This got me thinking about how we could automate it, so no one has to remember to run it manually in the future. We could integrate this directly into our repository workflow.

My main idea is to use a GitHub Action. We can create a workflow that automatically runs your jq command every time the config.json file is changed on the main branch. The action would then commit the sorted file back to the repository if it was updated. It's a "set it and forget it" solution.

Here’s what the workflow file would look like:

# .github/workflows/sort-exercises.yml
name: Sort Practice Exercises

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main
    paths:
      - 'config.json'

jobs:
  sort-json-file:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

      - name: Sort practice exercises
        run: |
          jq '.exercises.practice |= sort_by(.difficulty, .slug)' config.json > temp.json && mv temp.json config.json

      - name: Commit changes
        run: |
          git config user.name "github-actions[bot]"
          git config user.email "41898282+github-actions[bot]@users.noreply.github.com"
          if ! git diff --quiet config.json; then
            git add config.json
            git commit -m "chore: Sort practice exercises in config.json"
            git push
          else
            echo "No changes to commit."
          fi

The big advantage here is that it's all handled server-side, so contributors don't need to do any special setup on their machines.

Just to mention another option, we could also use a pre-commit hook. This would run the script on a developer's machine before they commit. It gives instant feedback, but it requires everyone to install the pre-commit framework locally, which might be a small hurdle for contributors.

For our project, I think the GitHub Action is the better approach.

What do you think of this idea? If you agree, we can add this workflow as part of this PR or in a follow-up.

[rabestro]

Merge conflicts...

[IsaacG]

I'm not opposed to an automatic check. I'm not a huge fan of automatic commits, though. I definitely think that's worth discussion separately from this change, though. I think sorting the exercises is worth doing and ought to be a stand alone PR.

[rabestro]

LGFM

[glennj]

Regarding automatic commits, I don't think it's worth the added complexity. We're not adding that many new exercises, and we can put the new exercise in the right place. Or not, in which case, we collectively spend a few minutes once a year to PR it.